Oxidation resistance and mechanical property of cosputtered quasi-amorphous Ta–Si–N films under vacuum rapid thermal annealing
✍ Scribed by C.K. Chung; T.S. Chen; N.W. Chang; S.C. Chang; M.W. Liao
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2010
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 779 KB
- Volume
- 205
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0257-8972
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
The oxidation resistance and mechanical properties of Ta-Si-N films at high temperature are important issues for application. In this paper, quasi-amorphous Ta-Si-N thin films were fabricated by using reactive magnetron co-sputtering at different Si/Ta power ratios and nitrogen flow ratios (FN 2 % = FN 2 /(FAr + FN 2 ) × 100%). Vacuum rapid thermal annealing at 600-900 °C at 2.6 Pa was performed to investigate the oxidation resistance of films. At the higher Si/Ta power ratio and increased FN 2 %, there is low oxygen fraction (O/(O + N) ≤ 0.2) of films at high annealing temperature which corresponds to benefit oxidation resistance. The crystalline δ-Ta 2 O 5 phase was formed at 900 °C for all films. The islands of oxide were formed on the surface of films at low-Sicontent (≤ 20 at.%) after 900 °C annealing. The hardness of all as-deposited Ta-Si-N films was between 16 and 24 GPa. The low-Si-content Ta-Si-N films has higher hardness than high-Si-content (≥ 20 at.%) ones due to lower fraction of soft amorphous SiN x . The effect of annealing temperature on the correlation among process parameters, microstructure, phase transformation and hardness is discussed. The Ta-Si-N formed at 6 FN 2 % and Si/Ta power ratio of 2/1 can be the best candidate for good oxidation resistance with appropriate mechanical property.